h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You can't dress this one up and make it pretty. The holidays is when your regular helpers are away. It's when the kitchen staff are dedicated to leaving early. It seems as if only the Hispanic Jehovah's Witnesses, who don't believe in Christmas, are content to carry on in their full shifts.

My surviving relatives are all on the east coast, and my friends are also far away, all but a few. One came to see me yesterday, so I have not spent the time alone. I have made sure that I have plenty to do -- things to read, art projects to complete, this website to expand. I really don't want to whinge, but nothing brings home the news like a holiday. I'm institutionalised.

Ladera has tried to dress it up. And there are lots and lots of very good people who give us residents time; they come and sing carols, bringing children who hand out cards they made in class with construction paper and glitter. There are entertainers in the day room, giving it all they've got, willing to look ridiculous if it will inject a little cheer into the moribund classes.

I can't tell you how weird it is to be on the receiving end of this stuff, to be the old woman in the bed at whom the children stare. When I was in high school, our music teacher selected a group of us to spend a cold day going to several places like Ladera to perform. I can muster up a memory of the elders for whom I played. Several beamed at us; even more simply leveled a cool gaze as if to say, "So, entertain me already." And of course there were always the bristlecone pines along the sides of the room, their bodies unmoving and their stare enigmatic. We students were glad to leave, although we were not rude or contemptuous of our audience.

Several days before Christmas, Santa and Mrs. Claus visited Ladera, and the announcement came over the PA system: Come on down and have your picture taken with Mr. and Mrs. Claus!

I ask you -- when was the last time you were sober and had your picture taken with Santa? I bet your age was in single digits. So why would this be thought to be appealing to old people? I thought I was safe because I was bedridden that day, but no. Having exhausted the population of the day room, the Clauses and their photographer decided to fan out and visit all the people still in their rooms. Which I didn't think could possibly happen until they stood at the entrance to my room like American Gothic in red polyester. I submitted to the photo op but then demanded one of my own.

This is what Annie Dillard was talking about in that essay from Teaching a Stone to Talk. You can't take the comedy out of the human condition, even where we humans think we're being sublime. These wonderfully well-meaning people gave up an afternoon to put on those red suits and wigs to mix it up with the dying. To cheer us up. And it worked for me! I got it, the irony, I really did. Kim, the head of Activities, she knows my temperament. She's the blonde in the doorway, watching my reaction to the Clauses. But imagine how it was for them that day, looking amongst the bristlecones for somebody they could amuse. Or walking down the hallway and encountering some form of suffering in every room they entered. For that gesture I might as well give up some dignity, and sit in Santa's lap and ask for chocolate and world peace.

(cross-posted in my blog at lilatladera.com, with photos)

That's one sour looking Mary Christmas

I have been performing in homes too. It's odd. As you say, some seem to enjoy it, some are just glazed over, and some seem to be seriously miffed. I suppose I can understand all the reactions, but it's hard to really put myself in that situation, being on the receiving end. Not having *chosen* the home, or the entertainment...

Many hugs.

I also know what you mean, we were singing in the local old people's home at Christmas when I was at school.